I remember when I bought my first home and within a few months there was a rate rise. I freaked out and was forced to redo my budget.  Fortunately, it meant I simply had less play money for nights out. I was 24 so the extra $25 a week in loan repayments was a lot to me. Fast forward to the GFC when rates went up to over 8% and then rapidly started to decline as the economy came to a halt. I had out of fear locked in at…

“One of the things that I am really proud of at Smartmove is the culture of diversity that we have across our business now,” Darren said. “From a professional perspective that diversity creates so much opportunity. Especially now running a business across three different countries, that understanding and listening to others is so important as we navigate our success across different teams and cultures to come together to achieve amazing things for our customers.” Read more    

You’ve found someone you want to spend your life with (or a significant chunk of it, at least) – the hard part is over, right? Wrong. You know each other well enough to know whether or not you each blow the budget every month, but you probably don’t know each other’s complete credit history. So, before you buy a property together, there are plenty of discussions you need to have. Here are three of them. Have they defaulted on any payments? He or she might be relatively debt free now,…

As a homeowner with a mortgage, chances are you’ve heard of the term ‘refinancing’. Refinancing involves reviewing your current mortgage, and potentially swapping your loan to another lender who can better meet your current needs, wants, and circumstances. Refinancing can also allow you to consolidate your debts or pay down your mortgage more quickly. Another common reason borrowers look to refinance is so that they can access equity – the amount you’d get from selling your home after settling any associated loans, such as a mortgage on that property, and…

Darren Little and Simon Orbell have been recognised as 2020 Mortgage Global 100 by MPA Magazine. Smartmove CEO Darren Little has more than 30 years of experience in financial services. He joined Smartmove in 2014, initially as general manager before he was appointed to his current role. Prior to joining Smartmove, he worked at St George Bank as head of mortgage services, leading a team of specialists to ensure the bank is well positioned in the national broker market. Simon Orbell, meanwhile, is a director, co-founder, and senior mortgage adviser…

Australia has gone into recession for the first time in 28 years. What effect could it have on you? Australia has had a very good run when it comes to continued economic growth. Twenty-eight years without a recession is a record achievement, with the previous one in 1991. So what is a recession, and what does it mean for you? What is it? The Reserve Bank of Australia has two different definitions of what a recession is. The first is a more general one: A recession can be defined as…

Helping your kids get a handle on money can set them up with good habits that last forever. It’s no surprise to learn that the younger you start teaching kids about money – how it works and how to manage it – the better prepared they are for the rest of their lives. So what’s the best way to teach them? In some ways, it’s getting even harder to see what money is and understand its value and role because, thanks to COVID-19 and social distancing, we’re not using cash…

Mortgage approval rules are set to be relaxed to try to help the economy recover from COVID-19. But is this a good thing? To help counter the effects of COVID-19 on the economy, the Federal Government has announced plans to loosen the responsible lending laws governing the loan approval processes. The idea is to make it simpler to buy a house or refinance your current home loan. With people continuing to buy homes and building new ones, the economy will get a shot in the arm that will hopefully help…